Jan Zavala, a longtime friend of former County Judge Dolores Briones, on Monday testified that she didn't see anything wrong with a contract that would pay her $11,000 in 2005 and 2006 for no work and from which she would pass along another $24,000 to then-County Judge Briones -- who was the county official in charge of the grant the money came from.

Meanwhile, the contractor who paid the money gave another contract to a senior official at Aliviane Inc. who would have had to work 50 hours a week on top of his full-time job and another consulting position, if he were to charge his normal rate.

REPORTER

Marty Schladen

Monday opened the second week in the trial of Cirilo "Chilo" Madrid, who until earlier this year was the top executive at Aliviane. He is charged with conspiracy and theft or embezzlement of federal funds from the Border Children's Mental Health Collaborative in 2005 and 2006.

Madrid's long-time associate, Ruben "Sonny" Garcia, and his company, LKG Enterprises Inc., pleaded guilty this summer to bribing Briones and defrauding the collaborative of $550,000. Briones pleaded guilty in a separate proceeding in December 2011, days before Madrid and Garcia were indicted.

Zavala, who said she'd known Briones since high school, served as the conduit for the former county judge's bribes. She said that late in 2005, just after LKG got the contract to evaluate the Border Children's Mental Health Collaborative, she met twice with Madrid and Garcia at El Paso restaurants.

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Briones had asked her to meet with the men and sign a contract, Zavala said.

Garcia and Madrid explained that the collaborative was intended to bring home mentally ill children housed at residential facilities outside the county and design a way to provide services here. Zavala, who has worked on Briones' political campaigns, said she understood that Garcia and Madrid wanted Briones to do work for the program, but the payments had to be kept secret.

"It would appear as a conflict of interest," Zavala said.

As county judge, Briones was "principal investigator" or the official most responsible for the county-run, federally funded program. In her guilty plea, Briones admitted that the payments were for her political support of LKG's contract as it failed to do the work it was paid for.

During their meetings with Zavala, Madrid and Garcia got her to sign a $3,000-a-month contract with LKG, supposedly to provide data analysis. Zavala agreed to pass $2,000 of the money along to Briones, Zavala, who has not been charged, testified.

They spoke only vaguely about actual work, Zavala said.

"Mr. Garcia told me that I might be asked to attend board meetings with him and I might be asked to do some analytical work for him," she said.

Zavala said that other than passing money along to Briones, she never did any work under the contract. Zavala said she didn't see any problems as she contemplated a deal in which she might be paid $11,000 for doing nothing other than pass along $24,000 from a county program to the official who was in charge of it.

"At the time it was explained to me, I didn't see anything wrong with it -- trying to bring services to the children of El Paso County," she said.

Earlier in the day, Aliviane Divisional Director Jose Soria testified that he didn't see anything wrong with giving a $100,000 subcontract to his boss, Madrid, who sat on the Border Children's Mental Health Collaborative's governance team.

Garcia testified last week that Soria, Madrid and others persuaded him to sign the LKG contract with the collaborative, but Soria said that Garcia approached him only after he had the contract.

"He said he was paying $10,000 a month," Soria, who also has not been charged, said, adding there were no negotiations about how much he would be paid.

When U.S. District Judge Frank Montalvo asked Soria how much he charges for consulting work, Soria answered $50 an hour. That means he'd have to work 50 hours a week in addition to the nine to 12 hours he was working for New Beginnings of Texas, a company owned by Madrid, and on top of his full-time job at Aliviane.

Because of health problems, Soria said, he asked Madrid to help with the contract, which required Soria's company to produce documents relating to quality assurance and the financial sustainability of the collaborative.

Madrid was paid $99,800 under the subcontract, his indictment says. LKG paid Soria a total of $110,000 or $120,000, Soria testified.

Federal and county officials contend the work the men were paid for was never done. When Assistant U.S. Attorney William Lewis asked Soria what quality assurance had been done, Soria said he had done research on the "appropriateness of funding mechanisms."

In late 2006, as government officials questioned why LKG had produced no documentation to support its $50,000 monthly invoices, Briones told Garcia to produce some documentation -- fast, Garcia testified last week.

That's when Soria's company produced a 573-page binder for county officials. It included lengthy government documents downloaded off the Internet, newspaper articles bearing little relation to the collaborative and a 20-page report ostensibly on financial sustainability that Madrid has admitted to plagiarizing.

Lewis focused on billing and other documents Madrid produced. Not only did his invoices fail to describe the work Madrid claimed to have done, Madrid only submitted them after he'd been paid by Soria, Soria said.

Madrid, Soria and others also submitted logs of work they supposedly had done for free to help the collaborative meet federal matches required under the grant. With only a few exceptions, the monthly logs submitted by the two men between December 2005 and April 2006 said they worked on the same days and for the same number of hours.

Soria, who turned in his logs to Madrid, said they didn't coordinate their report writing. Lewis asked him if the similarities in their logs were just coincidence.